An Antarctic Mystery

Chapter XVI

Tsalal Island

The night passed without alarm. No boat had put off
from the island, nor had a native shown himself upon the beach. The
Halbrane, then, had not been observed on her arrival; this was all
the better.

We had cast anchor in ten fathoms, at three miles from the coast.

When the Jane appeared in these waters, the people of Tsalal beheld a
ship for the first time, and they took it for an enormous animal,
regarding its masts as limbs, and its sails as garments. Now, they ought
to be better informed on this subject, and if they did not attempt to
visit us, to what motive were we to assign such conduct?

Captain Len Guy gave orders for the lowering of the ship’s largest boat,
in a voice which betrayed his impatience.

The order was executed, and the captain, addressing West, said—

“Send eight men down with Martin Holt; send Hunt to the helm. Remain
yourself at the moorings, and keep a look-out landwards as well as to
sea.”

“Aye, aye, sir; don’t be uneasy.”

“We are going ashore, and we shall try to gain the village of
Klock-Klock. If any difficulty should arise on sea, give us warning by
firing three shots.”

“All right,” replied West—“at a minute’s interval.”

“If we should not return before evening, send the second boat with ten
armed men under the boatswain’s orders, and let them station themselves
within a cable’s length of the shore, so as to escort us back. You
understand?”

“Perfectly, captain.”

“If we are not to be found, after you have done all in your power, you
will take command of the schooner, and bring her back to the Falklands.”

“I will do so.”

The large boat was rapidly got ready. Eight men embarked in it, including
Martin Holt and Hunt, all armed with rifles, pistols, and knives; the
latter weapons were slung in their belts. They also carried
cartridge-pouches. I stepped forward and said,—

“Will you not allow me to accompany you, captain?”

“If you wish to do so, Mr. Jeorling.”

I went to my cabin, took my gun—a repeating rifle-with ball and powder,
and rejoined Captain Len Guy, who had kept a place in the stern of the
boat for me. Our object was to discover the passage through which Arthur
Pym and Dirk Peters had crossed the reef on the 19th of January, 1828, in
the Jane’s boat. For twenty minutes we rowed along the reef, and
then Hunt discovered the pass, which was through a narrow cut in the
rocks. Leaving two men in the boat, we landed, and having gone through
the winding gorge which gave access to the crest of the coast, our little
force, headed by Hunt, pushed on towards the centre of the island.
Captain Len Guy and myself exchanged observations, as we walked, on the
subject of this country, which, as Arthur Pym declared, differed
essentially from every other land hitherto visited by human beings. We
soon found that Pym’s description was trustworthy. The general colour of
the plains was black, as though the clay were made of lava-dust; nowhere
was anything white to be seen. At a hundred paces distance Hunt began to
run towards an enormous mass of rock, climbed on it with great agility,
and looked out overa wide extent of space like a man who ought to
recognize the place he is in, but does not.

“What is the matter with him?” asked Captain Len Guy, who was observing
Hunt attentively.

“I don’t know what is the matter with him, captain. But, as you are
aware, everything about this man is odd: his ways are inexplicable, and
on certain sides of him he seems to belong to those strange beings whom
Arthur Pym asserts that he found on this island. One would even say
that—”

“That—” repeated the captain.

And then, without finishing my sentence, I said,—

“Captain, are you sure that you made a good observation when you took the
altitude yesterday?”

This was quite true, there could be no doubt on the point, and yet of all
that Arthur Pym described nothing existed, or rather, nothing was any
longer to be seen. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a plant was visible in
the landscape. There was no sign of the wooded hills between which the
village of Klock-Klock ought to lie, or of the streams from which the
crew of the fane had not ventured to drink. There was no water anywhere;
but everywhere absolute, awful drought.

Nevertheless, Hunt walked on rapidly, without showing any hesitation. It
seemed as though he was led by a natural instinct, “a bee’s flight,” as
we say in America. I know not what presentiment induced us to follow him
as the best of guides, a Chingachgook, a Renard-Subtil. And why not? Was
not he the fellow-countryman of Fenlmore Coopet’s heroes?

But, I must repeat that we had not before our eyes that fabulous land
which Arthur Pym described. The soil we were treading had been ravaged,
wrecked, torn by convulsion. It was black, a cindery black, as though it
had been vomited from the earth under the action of Plutonian forces; it
suggested that some appalling and irresistible cataclysm had overturned
the whole of its surface.

Not one of the animals mentioned in the narrative was to be seen, and
even the penguins which abound in the Antarctic regions had fled from
this uninhabitable land. Its stern silence and solitude made it a hideous
desert. No human being was to be seen either on the coast or in the
interior. Did any chance of finding William Guy and the survivors of the
fane exist in the midst of this scene of desolation?

I looked at Captain Len Guy. His pale face, dim eyes, and knit brow told
too plainly that hope was beginning to die within his breast.

And then the population of Tsalal Island, the almost naked men, armed
with clubs and lances, the tall, well-made, upstanding women, endowed
with grace and freedom of bearing not to be found in a civilized
society—those are the expressions of Arthur Pym—and the crowd of children
accompanying them, what had become of all these? Where were the multitude
of natives, with black skins, black hair, black teeth, who regarded white
colour with deadly terror?

All of a sudden a light flashed upon me. “An earthquake!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, two or three of those terrible shocks, so common in these regions
where the sea penetrates by infiltration, and a day comes when the
quantity of accumulated vapour makes its way out and destroys everything
on the surface.”

“Could an earthquake have changed Tsalal Island to such an extent?” asked
Len Guy, musingly.

“Yes, captain, an earthquake has done this thing; it has destroyed every
trace of all that Arthur Pym saw here.”

Hunt, who had drawn nigh to us, and was listening, nodded his head in
approval of my words.

“Are not these countries of the southern seas volcanic?” I resumed; “If
the Halbrane were to transport us to Victoria Land, we might find
the Erebus and the Terror in the midst of an eruption.”

“And yet,” observed Martin Holt, “if there had been an eruption here, we
should find lava beds.”

“I do not say that there has been an eruption,” I replied, “but I do say
the soil has been convulsed by an earthquake.”

On reflection it will be seen that the explanation given by me deserved
to be admitted. And then it came to my remembrance that according to
Arthur Pym’s narrative, Tsalal belonged to a group of islands which
extended towards the west. Unless the people of Tsalal had been
destroyed, it was possible that they might have fled into one of the
neighbouring islands. We should do well, then, to go and reconnoitre that
archipelago, for Tsalal clearly had no resources whatever to offer after
the cataclysm.I spoke of this to the captain.

“Yes,” he replied, and tears stood in his eyes, “yes, it may be so. And
yet, how could my brother and his unfortunate companions have found the
means of escaping? Is it not far more probable that they all perished in
the earthquake?”

Here Hunt made us a signal to follow him, and we did so.

After he had pushed across the valley for a considerable distance, he
stopped.

What a spectacle was before our eyes!

There, lying in heaps, were human bones, all the fragments of that
framework of humanity which we call the skeleton, hundreds of them,
without a particle of flesh, clusters of skulls still bearing some tufts
of hair—a vast bone heap, dried and whitened in this place! We were
struck dumb and motionless by this spectacle. When Captain Len Guy could
speak, he murmured,—

“My brother, my poor brother!”

On a little reflection, however, my mind refused to admit certain things.
How was this catastrophe to be reconciled with Patterson’s memoranda? The
entries in his note-book stated explicitly that the mate of the
Jane had left his companions on Tsalal Island seven months
previously. They could not then have perished in this earthquake, for the
state of the bones proved that it had taken place several years earlier,
and must have occurred after the departure of Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters,
since no mention of it was made in the narrative of the former.

These facts were, then, irreconcilable. If the earthquake was of recent
date, the presence of those time-bleached skeletons could not be
attributed to its action. In any case, the survivors of the Jane
were not among them. But then, where were they?

The valley of Klock-Klock extended no farther; we had to retrace our
steps in order to regain the coast. We had hardly gone half a mile on the
cliff’s edge when Hunt again stopped, on perceiving some fragments of
bones which were turning to dust, and did not seem to be those of a human
being.

Were these the remains of one of the strange animals described by Arthur
Pym, of which we had not hitherto seen any specimens?

Hunt suddenly uttered a cry, or rather a sort of savage growl, and held
out his enormous hand, holding a metal collar. Yes I a brass collar, a
collar eaten by rust, but bearing letters which might still be
deciphered. These letters formed the three following words:—

“Tiger—Arthur Pym.”

Tiger!—the name of the dog which had saved Arthur Pym’s life in the hold
of the Grampus, and, during the revolt of the crew, had sprung at
the throat of Jones, the sailor, who was immediately “finished” by Dirk
Peters.

So, then, that faithful animal had not perished in the shipwreck of the
Grampus. He had been taken on board the Jane at the same
time as Arthur Pym and the half-breed. And yet the narrative did not
allude to this, and after the meeting with the schooner there was no
longer any mention of the dog. All these contradictions occurred to me. I
could not reconcile the facts. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt that
Tiger had been saved from the shipwreck like Arthur Pym, had escaped the
landslip of the Klock-Klock hill, and had come to his death at last in
the catastrophe which had destroyed a portion of the population of
Tsalal.

But, again, William Guy and his five sailors could not be among those
skeletons which were strewn upon the earth, since they were living at the
time of Patterson’s departure, seven months ago, and the catastrophe
already dated several years back!

Three hours later we had returned on board the Halbrane, without
having made any other discovery. Captain Len Guy went direct to his
cabin, shut himself up there, and did not reappear even at dinner hour.

The following day, as I wished to return to the island in order to resume
its exploration from one coast to the other, I requested West to have me
rowed ashore.

He consented, after he had been authorized by Captain Len Guy, who did
not come with us.

Hung the boatswain, Martin Holt, four men, and myself took our places in
the boatt without arms; for there was no longer anything to fear.

We disembarked at our yesterday’s landing-place, and Hunt again led the
way towards the hill of Klock-Klock. Nothing remained of the eminence
that had been carried away in the artificial landslip, from which the
captain of the Jane, Patterson, his second officer, and five of
his men had happily escaped. The village of Klock-Klock had thus
disappeared; and doubtless the mystery of the strange discoveries
narrated in Edgar Poe’s work was now and ever would remain beyond
solution.

We had only to regain our ship, returning by the east side of the coast.
Hunt brought us through the space where sheds had been erected for the
preparation of the bêche-de mer, and we saw the remains of them.
On all sides silence and abandonment reigned.

We made a brief pause at the place where Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters
seized upon the boat which bore them towards higher latitudes, even to
that horizon of dark vapour whose rents permitted them to discern the
huge human figure, the white giant.

Hunt stood with crossed arms, his eyes devouring the vast extent of the
sea.

“Well, Hunt?” said I, tentatively.

Hunt did not appear to hear me; he did not turn his head in my direction.

“What are we doing here?” I asked him, and touched him on the shoulder.

He started, and cast a glance upon me which went to my heart.

“Come along, Hunt,” cried Hurliguerly. “Are you going to take root on
this rock? Don’t you see the Halbrane waiting for us at her
moorings? Come along. We shall be off to-morrow. There is nothing more to
do here.”

It seemed to me that Hunt’s trembling lips repeated the word “nothing,”
while his whole bearing protested against what the boatswain said.

The boat brought us back to the ship. Captain Len Guy had not left his
cabin. West, having received no orders, was pacing the deck aft. I seated
myself at the foot of the mainmast, observing the sea which lay open and
free before us.

At this moment the captain came on deck; he was very pale, and his
features looked pinched and weary.

“Mr. Jeorling,” said he, “I can affirm conscientiously that I have done
all it was possible to do. Can I hope henceforth that my brother William
and his companions—No! No! We must go away—before winter—”

He drew himself up, and cast a last glance towards Tsalal Island.

“To-morrow, Jim,” he said to West, “to morrow we will make sail as early
as possible.”